Game of the Month: August 2008

by Matt Casamassina

August 29, 2008 - With all the videogames that are released each and every month, it can be quite a difficult task to decide which title to spend your hard-earned money on. Granted you could go by our review scores alone and weed through the long list of names to find something that scored high or low, but what if you had somewhere else to turn?

Rather than wait until the end of the year like for our big award blowout, your incredibly masculine friends at IGN.com have decided to employ a monthly tribute to the weeks that were. We're resolved to illustrate to our readers what we thought was the very best game for each system over the past month, and tell you the reason why.

While some of us often chime in with our comments at the end of reviews, for the most part, the reviews on IGN are primarily written by one editor; in this feature we get all of the editors on a particular channel to vote for our Game of the Month. What better way to represent your channel than to speak your mind all at once?

How does it work? Simple. Any game released in the past month is eligible for the award and is taken through a battery of tests by every editor on that particular channel. After we've finished evaluating each game that comes down the pipeline, we put our heads together and decide on a single "best of" winner that's worthy of the title "IGN Game of the Month". Pretty straightforward, don't you think?

Now that we have the guidelines out of the way, let's move on and congratulate this month's winner...

Why we picked it: N+ is a celebration of old school gaming. Without any context or setup, you play as a ninja navigating grey environments in search of gold. If you boiled the platformer genre down to its purest essence, N+ is what you'd get. You move and jump. That's it. The controls are dead on, and the game has a very clean, minimal style. Levels are quite short -- perfect for portable gaming. In each, you'll need to help your ninja buddy make his way to the exit. Various traps and obstacles will get in the way, and there is also that pesky time limit to keep an eye on. Luckily, there is plenty of gold lying around that will add seconds to the clock. The game runs on an impressive physics engine that lets you slide, bounce, and float to your destinations. This is an extremely polished game that fits the DS like a glove. It's got style, grace, and attitude, and it feels good to play. The physics are great, and almost every level is fiendishly clever. It's also one of the rare titles that are presented better on a handheld than on a console. No question, N+ is one of the best DS games of the year.

Reader's Game of the Month: N+
Publisher:Atari
Developer:SilverBurch Studios / Metanet Software
Release Date: August 26, 2008, 2008

Reader Review quote: I totally love this game. It makes me want to weep into my hands and praise the heavens. Seriously though, it's good. No, strike that -- really good.
read the full review

-- submitted by matt-ign